Amateur Hour in the White House

I'm currently working on an upcoming piece about the real reasons President Obama's poll numbers and popularity (especially among the "moderates" who put him in office) have dropped this summer, but for now, enjoy the wisdom and insight of Thomas Sowell. His latest nationally syndicated column is sobering.

An excerpt:

Group identity politics has poisoned many other countries, including at various times Kenya, Czechoslovakia, Fiji, Guyana, Canada, Nigeria, India, and Rwanda. In some countries the polarization has gone as far as mass expulsions or civil war.

The desire of many Americans for a "post-racial" society is well-founded, though the belief that Barack Obama would move in that direction was extremely ill-advised, given the history of his actions and associations.

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites-- and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the prospects of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

Free Our Health Care...Now

If you haven't signed the petition to "Free our health care", PLEASE do so. It takes 20 seconds to fill out, and it really can have an effect on the way our representatives vote this fall. There are more options out there than are being presented by the media who has posed this important debate as a "Obamacare or nothing" one...which is nonsense. Newt agrees with me:

The Sins of the Conservative Father

A Sad Legacy of Conservative Indifference towards Minorities

by: R.J. Moeller

The prevailing lack of concern towards matters of race and ethnicity has been holding the conservative movement back from convincingly making its case to the entire American electorate for some time now. It is difficult to say it, especially in light of the fact that so much of the “racially insensitive” stigma that we on the Right remain shackled with has been purposely perpetuated and exaggerated by those who have vested interests in seeing certain opposing political parties and ideologies succeed. But where there is smoke there is fire, and our shameful track record of failing to care enough to genuinely reach across ethnic and cultural lines has been smoldering among supporters of conservative, libertarian, and Republican principles for decades

.

Understandably, few issues are more sensitive than those related to race. For this specific reason, my intent today is simply to offer some sober reflection on what I see as some of the root causes for the cultural and political chasm that unmistakably exists between the white religious conservative demographic (that I myself am apart of), and the black and Latino communities that exist all around this great nation of ours.

Why is it that when we agree on so many core moral and social issues with black and Latino voters, when we share so many common values, that the conservative movement has not made any serious in-roads with black and Latino voters? Why it is when people of color such as Condoleeza Rice, Thomas Sowell, or Alberto Gonzalez boldly proclaim their conservative beliefs, they are immediately lambasted by the race-obsessed media as near-traitors, or largely ignored among their own ethnic and racial ranks? Why are there no conservative think-tanks, or so few GOP offices, in the same neighborhoods where ACORN and Obama have community-organized their way to political victory?

My theory, in short: we’re suffering from the “sins of our (conservative) fathers.”

One of the best writers in history, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, deeply believed in the biblical idea of “generational sin.” In what I consider to be his finest work, The Possessed (a.k.a. The Devils), Dostoevsky goes to great detailed lengths to show how the moral decisions of one generation irrevocably alter the lives and culture of those in succeeding ones.

Through characters such as Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and his son Peter we see how the offspring of intellectually and morally irresponsible people often suffer the unintended consequences of their forbearers. Stepan was a professor and intellectual who helped to promote among the youths of Russia the idea that to undermine and ignore authority, specifically in regards to the institutions of the Church and the traditional family, was an exciting and beneficial thing. Consequently his son, the depraved Peter Verhhovensky, decided to do his old man one better: He actively seeks to violently hack Russian society’s anchor away from its moral and cultural mooring in favor first of senseless and eventually atheistic communism.

Although The Possessed was a novel written in the 1860’s, Dostoyevsky correctly identified the cultural “sins” of his beloved country that would eventually, some 50 years later, lead Russia towards the devastation that is totalitarianism. He wasn’t Nostradamus; he simply saw the danger in the contemporary trends and ideologies of his time, and was discerning enough to be able to predict their consequences.

Culturally speaking, the last 50 years in America have seen some remarkable changes for the better. Civil Rights legislation in the 1960’s finally put a legal end to institutional racism. There is today a black President sitting in the Oval Office, and black celebrities from Oprah to Will Smith to Tiger Woods are appropriately in the nation’s headlines given their talents and success.

Before Tiger and Will there was a man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who challenged the conscience of a nation with his compelling and prolific speeches and writings. He and so many others, whites and blacks, worked tirelessly to see a day when the standard for judging another human would be the “content of their character” instead of the color of their skin. The Civil Rights pioneers used deliberately, unapologetically religious terminology and understood that hatred and bigotry are written on the sinful human heart. They also understood that while it was so important for all Americans to be equal under the law, true social harmony and acceptance is an on-going process that can incrementally improve but will never be entirely completed “in this world, but the next.”

The pleas from abolitionists, from Civil Rights activists, were appeals to the distinctly American value system. They were appeals to a standard envisioned and articulated by our Founders: free men and women living in the type of true freedom that emanates from the recognition that their rights are Creator-endowed, not State-endowed.

As a Christian and a conservative, someone who identifies with the politics, faith and worldview of great men such as John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan, I look back on the racial sins of my nation, my ancestral fathers and mothers, with astonishment, grief, and even horror. I experience the same type of sorrow and moral outrage one feels when you hear of the nightmares that were the Holocaust or the more recent Rwandan genocide.

The idea that men and women could (and did) treat other human beings with such cruelty, inhumanity, and degradation, including the and lynching that took place, is repulsive to the sensibilities of any sane person. It is so at odds with the common desire for simple human decency most Americans have today that stories of past violent from -filled eras become surreal, other-worldly historical events and perhaps unavoidably little more.

This disassociation with our past, something all humans in the modern, civilized world seem to struggle against, is also a real problem among many white conservatives today. The past is either too distant from our busy, self-obsessed lives, or in many instances simply too painful to accept given how we wish to see ourselves (and our proud history as a generous, courageous nation otherwise). Therefore we so often instinctively consign all recognition of our racist legacy to a small corner of our collective and individual consciousness.

In other words, we live as if it never happened.

This emotional detachment from the shocking realities of the sins of are, I believe, perhaps the primary factor explaining the great divide specifically between white traditional, conservative Americans and their black (and Hispanic) brethren.

Few Americans in 2009, regardless their skin color, can actually claim to know what it felt like to have been a slave. But many continue to feel the enduring hurt and pain of bigotry. Many are still mistreated because of the way they look and for no other reason. Sadly, some will be refused consideration as a viable political candidate because of the perpetually destructive climate of race-infused “identity politics” that so tes our cultural landscape these days.

Yet, despite these grim present day realities, it is also wrong to paint any entire demographic, whether it is Caucasian conservatives or inner-city blacks, with one giant bigoted brush. While there are definitely still those among us who readily drink from the racial toxins of the past, the overwhelming majority of the people I know across the color spectrum are anything but racists.

In my own life, what I am far more familiar with are the loving, kind, and caring conservatives that raised me; that surround me at my church; or that write the books and articles that further inform me about my faith and brand of politics. They struggle, as I struggle, with the indisputable fact of America’s troubled racial history, but are often unsure as to how best to deal with those facts. Therefore the mainstream media’s popular script that all conservatives are bigots (or closet ones) who personally care little for blacks and Latinos is not true, any more than the erroneous claim that all liberals are innately free of .

But the fact that we’re not all bigots can by no means get “my people” off the hook when it comes to the causes of current racial tensions. As I said, the most glaring failure of (predominantly Republican-voting) white religious conservatives these past five decades has been the almost entirely hands-off approach we’ve taken to in dealing with minority groups. This separation from engagement in the lives and concerns of minority groups can be explained (not excused) by a number of potential causes.

Part of the problem is that white conservatives feel brow-beaten by the media, Hollywood, and Democratic Party strategists and end up accepting the premise that only liberals love the “little guy” and aggrieved minorities. It’s also partly because minority groups have so completely and openly aligned themselves with the liberal Democratic policies and programs that conservatives find unacceptable.

But the most serious cause of our unfortunate retreat from serious and sustained bridge-building efforts between our communities and theirs is that we simply haven’t cared enough to try.

Perhaps we have been too filled with apprehension or fear of failure, or perhaps too self-assured that we could win the political day without the support of minorities, or perhaps we have been just too absorbed in our lives and personal agendas. In any case we have failed to reach outside of our familiar voting blocks to those in other ethnic circles. One clear consequence of this sin of omission is that we conservatives have dug ourselves into a demographic pit which we may not climb out of for a generation. Not unless there is a serious, heartfelt, altruistic, and unselfish effort to build personal relationships and genuine coalitions with members of the black and Hispanic community will we see a shift in voting patterns, demographics, and big-government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.

The traditional, conservative movement is not going to change course until we as individual white conservatives change course and actively begin building individual friendships person to person – rather than only just voter to voter – with those who are different in skin color and cultural background than we are. Things won’t change until we have credibility among groups of people who largely feel white conservatives don’t care.

The fact that the Republican Party was created primarily over the moral imperative to free the slaves is one of the great historical ironies of our time. How is it that the party that stood up to such a monstrous institutional evil of slavery is today the same party identified with racial polarization and isolation? How is it that the same party which produced the first black Senators and Congressmen during Reconstruction today struggles to find candidates of color to serve as standard-bearers for the conservative movement? Why can’t the same values and principles that spurred the white conservatives who led the abolitionist movement be a force for good and truth in minority communities today?

Though we can take some solace (even pride) in our origins as conservative Republicans, the real question comes back to this: What are we doing today to connect with the lives and needs of our fellow black and Latino citizens? Sure it is historically accurate to note that it was Republicans, and not the Southern Democrats, who helped President Lyndon Johnson pass the historic Civil Rights legislation in 1964. But how many black and Hispanic families can point to white conservatives today and say, “They are genuinely interested in me as a person. They reach out to me at work, at church, in politics. They want to learn my life’s story and build a friendship for friendship’s sake.”

Let me put it another way: All of the economic or social good white conservatives may have attempted for minorities, for all Americans, in the past 50 years has been too easily negated by the failure to instill in this next generation a genuine desire to personally connect with people of different skin color and socio-economic background.

Please understand that I don’t have the audacity to think I know exactly how to best bring people together. I leave such self-important thinking to community organizers from the Southside of Chicago. In all honesty, I can only claim one black person in my life that qualifies as a true personal friend. He and I are connected not through a government cultural sensitivity training program, but through our shared values and mutual interests.

But if we’re talking about the beginnings of a real shift in the relationship between white conservative Americans, and the minority communities around us, we’re going to have to think bigger. We’ll have to do more than just sit around hoping for a black or Hispanic person to catch our eye at Starbucks and ask what our Milton Friedman book is about. I’m not entirely sure how to go about it all, but I do know this much – we need to change course and do so now. We need to start talking about this issue with a real urgency. Not primarily to regain some future political demographic high ground, for that would be using relationships simply as a utilitarian means to an end – and such bald insincerity would be sniffed out for what it is in a moment.

Rather, as conservatives we should focus on building friendships across ethnic lines and accepting others into our lives with cultural differences because it is the right (dare I say biblical) thing to do.

Yet, politics impacts people’s lives for good or ill so we must not dismiss it entirely from the issue at hand. Votes matter and in no way is it wrong or immoral to try and persuade members of any ethnic community that the conservative philosophy of life holds much more promise for lasting advancement and prosperity than does the liberal one. But again, what we truly struggle with is that the sins of indifference from our past have caught up with modern conservatives. Liberals have seized upon our largely apathetic legacy and now set the terms of the debate by being proactive with their bad ideas.

We have the better, more American ideas, ideas that could absolutely change the entire socio-economic landscape for blacks and Latinos, yet our idea on the Right of engaging minorities in the political realm is sitting back to wait and see who Colin Powell will vote for. At that point, you’ve lost the minority vote.

The tragic paradox in this is that as a white, evangelical, conservative American I likely share more in common when it comes to family values and Judeo-Christian beliefs with the typical black and Hispanic voter than does a secular-progressive liberal such as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). But what good does our common ground do if I choose never to set foot on it and extend my hand? In practical, political terms, when is the GOP going to set up offices in inner-city neighborhoods and go door to door with their message of genuine empowerment and hope with even half of the same zealotry that ACORN did in 2008?

The fact that our first black president was not a conservative Republican, but a far-Left, pro-choice, Euro-socialist is disappointing, but it isn’t a surprise. Ignore any group long enough and they will go elsewhere looking for friends – even if those friends prove to be radicals whose policies perpetuate the problems minorities face.

One can only wonder what would have happened if white, evangelical conservatives had reached out to Barack’s single mother and the young Obama in those difficult and lonely days they were literally on their own? What if instead of feeling that he needed to prove his black identity by joining radically Leftist activists, Barack had been attracted to the multiple organizations comprised of black and white conservatives working on the Southside of Chicago to bring messages of entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, job training, and all the other things that could really change these impoverished neighborhoods?

While there are undoubtedly other reasons I’m not aware of, reasons I intend to seek out and learn more about, I do understand in part why many black and Hispanic people feel alienated from white conservatives. We’ve not seriously pursued a relationship with them. We’ve not made our case directly to them. We’ve not been genuinely interested in being friends for friendship’s sake, nor have we attempted to get any feedback from them.

Until we do, until we change the dynamics of this largely non-existent relationship, until we begin to seriously make amends for past sins of indifference and ambivalence, and do so with the solemn intent to build lasting relationships across cultural lines, we can expect only more of the same. The economically-crippling, socially-destructive, morally-incoherent liberal worldview that currently tes our politics, media, and academia will continue to push us away from the ideals and values that the majority of Americans, regardless their skin color, still hold dear.

We can blame our parents no longer. As Civil Rights marchers in the 1960’s used to chant, “Do right, white man. Do right.” The time is now, and much more than a political election here-or-there is at stake.

What Iran Thinks

I realize there is a slew of legitimate things to be concerned about in our own country, what with socialized medicine and angry Harvard professors taking up most of our time and patience, but please don't forget about the dangerous regime in Iran which is intent on developing nuclear capabilities in the not-too-distant future.

Amir Taheri, writing in today's NY Post, offers some sober reminders about the murderous mullahs in Tehran.

Here's what the bad guys think of us over there:

According to the newspaper Kayhan, which reflects the views of the leadership in Tehran, the United States is "in a state of strategic desperation" in the Middle East and has no stomach for a serious confrontation with Iran.

Follow up from Steyn

I like to refortify my positions with the wisdom of wiser conservatives than myself, so take a gander at what columnist-of-the-world Mark Steyn has to say about the racially-charged controversy surrounding President Obama, his Harvard friend Professor Gates, and a local cop in Cambridge, MA. This is the single best column on the matter that I've come across to-date.

An excerpt:

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama’s otherwise listless press conference on “health care” were his robust remarks on the “racist” incident involving Prof. Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter “acted stupidly,” pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of the free world had the guts to stand up and speak truth to municipal police sergeant James Crowley.

For everyone other than the president, what happened at Professor Gates’s house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, “jimmied his way into the house.” Someone witnessing the “break-in” called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there. Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sergeant Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to “educate him about the history of racism in America.” Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents re-mortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.

There appears to be a foot in your mouth, Mr. President

President Obama held a press conference this week to try and win over the hearts and minds of Americans to his "public option" health insurance plan. Well, not only did that sale-pitch appear to ring as hollow as it actually is, but the Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America also made sure to find time at the end of his remarks to castigate the Cambridge Police Department for arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (pictured left)

Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department arrested Professor Gates the other night when a neighbor of Gates' called in to report what she thought was a robbery taking place. Turns out it was actually just Gates having to work hard to open a door on his house that was broken. Keep in mind that the police have been called out to this same residence before for a break in. When Sgt. Crowley showed up and asked to see some ID from the good professor, Gates did what all liberal intellectuals would do and played the "race card". Read more of the story here, it's a doozy!

Well now the Cambridge police are rightly asking for an apology from the President who, without knowing the full report and relying on his community organizer's intuition of any matters involving white policemen, called their actions "stupid".



But all our fearless leader can muster is a comment via his press secretary that Obama regrets "the obsession" over his comments. Not that he is sorry for saying what he did about a situation he knew nothing about, siding against his own employees in the police force, but sorry that we non-Harvard educated dopes care so much about what the most important office-holder, a man who promised to bring unity to this nation, foolishly said in condemnation of appropriate actions by civil servants.

This is pathetic and embarrassing. It won't "sink" Obama's presidency or anything, but please recognize that while the president maintains we can't be so quick to make moral pronouncements about evil empires such as Iran and North Korea, he is all-too-ready to accuse and alienate our own citizens because a buddy of his made a fool of himself and was arrested.

The Five Movies You Need To See Before You Die

I was raised by my dad to love and appreciate great pieces of cinematic history. I've often felt like I was born in the wrong generation in regards to the type of movies, music, and literature I prefer. But trust me when I say that the movies I've listed here below are worth the time of any person at any time and of any age. I saw all of these movies before the age of 12, and dozens of times since.

These are classics that actually had story and plot-lines, fantastic acting, thrilling musical scores, and cinematography that didn't require "green screens" or CGI effects.

I've not listed them in any particular order, but I will start things off with my favorite movie of all time first:

1. Ben-Hur (1959) Starring the incomparable Charlton Heston




2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Based on the autobiography of legendary British soldier T.E. Lawrence who helped lead the Arab Revolt against the Turks during WWI




3. Doctor Zhivago (1965) Epic and exciting tale of the Russian Communist Revolution, told through the eyes of a mild-mannered doctor and the women he loved. Based on the Nobel prize winning novel of the same name.




4. Patton (1970) The definitive film on the definitive American general of the last 100 years. This movie won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actor (George C. Scott)




5. The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1957) British soldiers sent to blow up a bridge built by British soldiers held captive in a Japanese POW camp during WWII




Watch these films and you'll be a better person.

We Should Support Honduras, Liberty

by: R.J. Moeller

“This isn’t about the process, it’s about results.”
-David Axelrod

Even for all the “ends justify the means” proponents out there, that is some kind of daunting gauntlet for the president’s chief strategist and policy adviser to so publicly lie down. Of course Mr. Axelrod, a man who sharpened his political fangs in the most corrupt political system in the nation (Chicago), was in this quote specifically referring to the attitude the administration and congress have in regards to their bringing of Nanny-State socialized medicine to the Land of Liberty.

But if this really is the accepted mentality in the White House these days, one has to wonder why it is that Axelrod’s own boss is so disinterested in applying the same standard to situations that legitimately cry out for a “big picture” view?

I am speaking of the compelling plight of the people in the tiny Central American nation of Honduras.

A few weeks back here at A Voice in the Wilderness, I wrote about the misplaced moral priorities that result after years, perhaps a lifetime, of treating the “good bad and the bad good.” Specifically, I mentioned the disproportionate moral outrage shown to conservatives such as Sarah Palin, and the relatively non-existent moral outrage directed at the tyrannical theocratic regime in Iran who recently rigged their country’s presidential election. President Obama had none of the same dazzling rhetoric to offer in support of the courageous protesters who were defying a murderous oligarchy in the name of democracy and increase freedom.

Caution and discretion were required, or so we were told.

Yet it was only a matter of days after the protests broke out in Iran, as we were holding our national tongue in regards to other country’ affairs, that our president’s own vow-of-foreign-policy-silence was broken.

The Supreme Court of Honduras ordered the general of the military to forcibly remove the sitting president for attempting to forcibly bypass the national constitution and implement himself as a Castro-like ruler-for-life. Because of the not-too-distant horrors of a military dictatorship that existed for more than 20 years in the Western hemisphere’s 3rd poorest nation, the now-democratic nation has a constitutional condition that no leader is allowed to legally serve more than one term in office. Their ousted president had been trying to amend the Honduran constitution for months as his one-and-only term, which officially was supposed to end this fall, drew to a close.

The congress of Honduras opposed him. The Supreme Court opposed him. The military opposed him. And more importantly, the people (and the constitution) of Honduras overwhelmingly opposed him.

Guess who denounced the removal of the wannabe monarch, misleadingly calling what transpired a “military coup”? Hugo Chavez. The Castro brothers. The United Nations.

Oh, and Barack Obama.



The same day this story broke from Central America, our commander-in-chief publicly and roundly condemned the ousting. Never mind that it was a last resort for a nation desperate to avoid the tyranny from its own past. Never mind that it was completely legal under Honduran law. Never mind that a “coup” means that an independent and rouge militia takes over an entire government, which absolutely did not happen. Never mind that the president of Honduras’ own party, the same one which currently controls the congress, opposed his power-grab attempts and agreed with his forcible removal.

What is important is that “the world” now allegedly loves us more, right? Trading our support of liberty and freedom around the globe for the approval of the United Nations and Raul Castro is more important in the long run, don’t you think?

Folks, this is a travesty of epic proportions. If not reversed, our refusal to stand with Israel and Taiwan, the only two nations coming to Honduras’ defense on the world stage, will be a blight and shame on the history and honor of the United States of America.

It will rank up there with our abandoning of millions of allies in Southeast Asia after Vietnam who was subsequently massacred by the communists after our cowardly departure. It will rank up there with our abandoning of the Kurds in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War, who were then systematically targeted and murdered on a mass scale by Saddam Hussein.

It will rank up there with the missed opportunity in Iran last month to side with people opposed to the people currently building nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and hold the world hostage.

The frustration one feels as they begin to assess the situation in Honduras, a situation unmistakably clear as to what position one should take on it, is almost too much to bear. These are the times when I have to ask those committed to Obama's vision of change: how can we sit so idly by? The United States government has now cut off military aid to the impoverished nation. Further economic sanctions from countries like Venezuela, the main supplier of oil to Honduras, are already taking a heavy toll on the economy and lives of the Honduran people.

And for what? Because they followed their own laws and stopped a president form taking unprecedented and illegal powers?

What is happening here? How can we tolerate such morally confused behavior from our leaders? Fellow citizens, please for a moment put all partisan nonsense to the side and search your hearts and consciences: why in the world can we not speak for freedom’s sake in Iran, but then speak out against it in Honduras?

I realize the diplomatic and economic stakes are much higher when it comes to a near-nuclear, fanatical power like Iran, but our own nation was built on ideas and values and natural laws that are supposed to supercede both our leaders and electorate.

Can we not even offer up verbal or, if necessary, monetary support for people who yearn to be free from the same enemies we are threatened by ideologically and in some cases, militarily? Of course there are wonderful, concerned Americans who are voicing their support for Honduras, including radio talk show host Dennis Prager who actually traveled to Central America last week, broadcasting live from Honduras...but where our elected leaders and officials?

Make no mistake about it: the world is watching the United States. We know that many government heads hate us around the globe, but millions more of the actual citizens of those same countries love America and what we stand for. They immigrate here every day. They swim through shark-infested waters to arrive at our shores. Sure we have issues with illegal immigration, but the reason we have been blessed with greatness is first, our values (i.e. liberty, e pluribus unum, “In God We Trust”), and second, the great people who come assimilate here and take hold of their destiny in the “land of opportunity.”

Not everyone can come to the birthplace of freedom to live and work, and the people around the planet who choose to stay and adopt the values that America did not create, but uniquely identified and implemented, deserve our support. Obama said that part of his rationale in keeping silent in Iran was that we should not meddle in the affairs of other nations when it comes to their elections and political procedures.

Why then the turning of the proverbial back on Honduras, a nation who in following their laws, were forced to force their power-hungry, over-reaching leader out of office and the country? Why publicly side with the likes of Chavez and the Castro’s, especially when they are so clearly wrong and manipulating the rhetoric of democracy to condemn a people brave enough to stand up to their brand of political thuggery and strong-arming?

The process of removing threats to liberty is not always pleasant, and certainly offers no comfort to the weak-of-heart. But when has it ever been easy to maintain freedom even in a free country like our own? Who said it had to be “by the book” when bad people are opposed and prevented from dominating others? When we remain silent, evil triumphs. Hugo Chavez won’t stop trying to implement disciples of his socialist totalitarianism in countries in Central and South America. Consequently, we must never stop promoting and supporting those who oppose such soul-crushing authoritarianism, even if only with words. Just because we can’t send troops doesn’t mean we can’t help change the course of history for other freedom-loving people.

Let us pray that our leaders begin to put a higher premium on principles and values than on popularity and moral compromise. Let us pray that Obama and Axelrod begin to treat tyranny and oppression with even a fraction of the same cut-throat tenacity they do the uninhibited spending of our tax dollars.

Sad Beyond Words

I don't really know what to even say about this story from the Jerusalem Post entitled "I Wed Iranian Girls Before Their Execution". Mark Steyn had his brief reaction to it here, but the terror that many women face every day of their lives in Sharia-ruled nations is a chilling reality.

An excerpt from the JP story:

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

My Kind of Town (for jihad) Chicago Is...

Apparently my hometown was the most attractive spot for an Al Qaeda-linked group to hold their national "Fall of Capitalism & Rise of Islam" conference this weekend.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.

Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.

Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination "prepares the infantry" that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.

"It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."

Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.

"The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America," he said. "The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world."

Representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment when contacted by FOXNews.com

I have no problem with groups from various religions or worldviews congregating on our free shores to discuss their beliefs. But what I do have a problem with, where we all should logically draw the line, is when those groups are promoting, or in any way linked to, groups and ideologies that would not return the same favor should me and my band of merry conservative evangelical free-market advocates decide to hold our next "Capitalism Rules, Islam Drools" conference in Tehran or the West Bank.

The radical, irreconcilable wing of Islam has no interest in liberty, the dignity of human life, or religious tolerance. There will always be a tension between freedom of speech and security. We can't ignore the latter, or we'll lose the former.

Giddy Up

America is, in many ways, being put out to pasture by the far-Left contingency currently spending our children's children's inheritances in Washington like their ship was sinking. There is nothing we can't fix with a little tax increase on the "rich", right?

Well Mark Steyn sees things differently, and in his latest equestrian-themed column he takes to task the idea being perpetuated by the likes of VP Biden that we can simply adopt the Euro-Swedish style of Nanny State collectivism and things won't change for the worse for the average American...or any American for that matter. (Even the mean, old "rich" who spoil everything by creating jobs and paying the overwhelming majority of our taxes.)

The Old West has been succeeded by the new California, in which a bloated government bureaucracy rides herd on the ever more emaciated workhorses of the private sector. And as California goes – and it's going, going, gone – so goes the nation.

There aren't enough of us to pay for all this – for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission. The wealthiest 1 percent already pay 40 percent of all taxes, the top 10 percent pay 70 percent of taxes – and there simply are too few of them – or, more to the point, of you: You'll be surprised what percentage of you fall into "the top 2 percent" by the time Obama is through with you.

This isn't merely Swedenization. As that insouciant 19-million acre annexation suggests, when America Swedenizes, it does it on supersized scale. The salient point of that 1,200-page cap-and-trade monstrosity was that, in its final form, it was so huge that at the time the House voted it into law there was no written version of the bill, because Congressional typists were unable to type as fast as Congress can spend: They're legislating on such a scale that the poor bleeding typing fingers of the House stenographers can't keep up. Which means you can't keep up the payments on it all.

If you've got a small business, you're wasting your time. You're going to be taxed and regulated into the ground because you're the designated sucker. Tell your kids to forget about the private sector and sign up with the Equine Census Bureau: Jobs for life, early retirement. Government is where it's at. When in ROAM do as the ROAMens do.

In 1971, the United States Congress recognized mustangs as "living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West." And surely nothing captures the essence of the "pioneer spirit" than living on welfare in a federal care facility while being showered with government contraceptives. Welcome to America in the gelded age.

Joe Biden: Wrong (and weird)

The Vice President told old people today at an AARP event that unless he and Barack spend more of our money, the nation will go broke. This is Keynesian economics gone wild. When you are out of money in your personal life, the first thing to do, the first thing any economic planner or accountant would tell you to do would be to cut costs. Not our current leadership.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

If you don't know who John Maynard Keynes was, please take a minute to watch this:

What goes around...

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has a track-record of pretentiousness and smuggery, best exhibited by her dressing-down of a US General in a hearing on Capitol Hill last month. The General's crime? Following military protocol in addressing Boxer as "ma'am". Barbara was quick to remind the General that she had "worked hard" for her title of Senator.



Well, as conservative luck would have it, Senator Boxer found herself at the business-end of a verbal lashing today in an Environment and Public Works hearing. She posed a question regarding the atrocious Cap-and-Trade bill/abomination to Harry C. Alford, the president & CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Senator Boxer didn't like the response she got from Mr. Alford, tried to pit his condemning appraisal of the Cap-and-Trade bill against the opinion of another black leader, and Mr. Alford, shall we say, let her have it.

Enjoy this clip...I will be, for some time.

You MUST See This Movie

Yesterday my brother and my friend and I went to see The Stoning of Soraya M. It was a powerful film from the same producers of Passion of the Christ. The story is of a woman in Iran more than a decade ago who is executed for nothing more than a rumor. It deals with the harsh treatment of women in countries ruled by Sharia Law.



This is honestly one of the most important movies you'll ever see. In case you needed an extra motivation to spend the time and money on Soraya M, just know that the government in Iran has condemned this film.

Dennis Prager wrote an exceptional column on the film and the reasons why we need to support it.

An excerpt:

How many politically incorrect movies has Hollywood made in the last generation? How many films, for instance, have depicted communist evil? Given that Communism murdered more than 100 million innocents -- in peacetime! -- and enslaved about 1 billion more, one would think that Hollywood would have made a fair number of movies depicting the horrors of communism. But aside from "Dr. Zhivago" and "The Killing Fields," I cannot think of any. There are, of course, innumerable films depicting Nazi evil -- as well there should be -- but it takes no courage to make films depicting Nazis as evil.

Likewise, given Sept. 11, the slaughter of innocents around the world, and the atrocities within the Muslim world committed by “Islamists,” “Islamic fundamentalists,” “jihadists,” “Muslim radicals” “Islamofascists” -- or whatever other term one prefers -- one would think that Hollywood would have made many films on this subject. But it hasn't.

Yet, now, released as if by Providence the week after the fraudulent elections in Iran and the suppression and murder of Iranian dissidents, is a film about the nature of the radical Muslims who govern Iran. Titled "The Stoning of Soraya M.," the film depicts events based on the true story of a woman stoned to death in a rural village in Iran in 1986 for allegedly committing adultery.

If you want to understand the type of people who run Iran, see this film. If you want to understand why men and women risk their lives to demonstrate against the fascist theocracy that rules Iran, see this film.

Stories the American press just won't report on

In England, if you've got arthritis, you've got a long wait ahead of you for treatment. The "free" health care provided by the British government is rationed...meaning: if you have an ailment or disease that the bureaucrats deem less important in light of the reality of limited resources (i.e. skilled doctors, available space), you either are out of luck or will be out even more money when you have to pay to see a private physician (the kind those same bureaucrats seem themselves). This Daily Mail article divulges more on the matter.

People, PLEASE follow this link here and sign the petition to "Free Our Health Care Now". Every signature matters.

The new administration and congress are pushing through legislation at a break-neck speed. Congressmen and women are not even reading the entirety of the bills being put forth before they vote on them. Things are spiraling out of control, and the centerpiece of it all as far as Obama and Pelosi are concerned is health care. They want control of it, and they want it now. Take a moment and sign this petition. We need reform, but NOT the kind being proposed. The option should not be "bad reform or no reform." We're better than this. If nothing else convinces those of you on the Center-Left side of things, just ask yourself this: how can we pay for all this change? The "rich" only have so much.

Socialized Medicine, By Any Other Name

by: R.J. Moeller

The disconnect between what President Obama is saying he hopes to do about health insurance, and the reality of what will actually happen to our health care, could not be more profoundly misleading.

In plain English: the president is either knowingly deceiving American taxpayers about the inevitability of socialized medicine should his “public option” plan ever be signed into law, or he and his top advisers are unfamiliar with in’s and out’s of how numbers are added and subtracted on a balance sheet.

If you hear otherwise, the person spreading such nonsense either does not understand what is going on, or it is Joe Biden with whom you are speaking. If it is Joe Biden, tell him to tell President Obama to please refrain from socializing America’s health care.

To start, let me quickly summarize what the Obama “public option” plan entails.

Basically, the president wants to use federal resources to offer an insurance plan to “compete” with the ones private insurance companies offer. Obama, exposing even his teleprompter’s recognition that Americans still are uncomfortable with the idea of the same people who run their DMV and oversaw FEMA taking charge of their health care, continues to promote his idea in distinctly free market vernacular.

As if this public option was in anyway in keeping with the competitive characteristics of a capitalist economy. We’re led to envision the public option as just one choice out of many others, and more than this: that it will actually help facilitate competition in the health insurance marketplace with the inference being lower costs and better care for everyone.

He might as well have promised to bring Michael Jackson back from the grave.

No one is arguing with the notion that our health care system is in drastic need of reform, or “change”, if you are so inclined. But the reform required, the single most important, fundamental change needed, is a sweeping dislodgment of the federal government’s firm chokehold around the throat of the health care and insurance industry.

This fact, the need for the government to phase out their financial involvement, as you might have guessed, poses a serious tension between what is truly needed and what is misguidedly being proposed.

Money, in one way or another, is at the heart of our health care and insurance problems. Tax dollars, insurance premiums, the significant costs of medical procedures, fraud, waste, exploitation, and subsidized care for the uninsured (both legal citizens and illegal aliens) are all contributing factors to a system that has led to the mounting frustrations Americans are feeling about health care. Private citizens are upset about the high costs. Public lawmakers in Washington D.C. are upset that more of the system, with all of its increased tax dollars and bureaucratic control, isn’t already under their supervision.

Currently our federal government spends more on health care, via programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, than on any other single expenditure. More than national defense, more than education, more than anything else and the disparity between health care costs and all other expenditures increases every year.



Notably, at least $60 billion, roughly 10% of what our government spends on health care each year, is lost to fraud and waste. In 2006, the state of New York alone suffered losses of more than $4.4 billion to fraud and waste. A primary cause for such rampant fraud is that the government-run bureaucracies have little personal incentive, a minimal vested interest, in keeping better records and vigorously following up on abnormal claims.

Fraud can never be completely eliminated from any system of anything, but you can bet your “Obama-Biden” Nalgene carabiner that private insurance companies would not settle for such staggering losses due to incompetence or laziness. Heads would roll, or the company would go under.

But not so with Uncle Sam footing the bill. The federal government is a black-hole of spending, funded by other people’s money and promised away by “experts” in health care such as lawyers with names like Barney Frank and Harry Reid. The federal government can outspend, under-cut, and thoroughly confuse the price signals of a normal, functioning market better than any other entity.

President Obama is claiming to be merely offering nothing more than another insurance “option” to cover people who either currently can’t afford a plan or want some relief from their current costly one. That sounds nice, right? Who is against “choice” or “options”?

One thing that is conveniently never divulged is that only about 10% of Americans don’t have insurance. Everyone can get care, including illegal immigrants. Certainly the fact anyone can walk in to an emergency room and get care is one of the most significant contributing factors to the rising overall costs in health care, and needs serious consideration and examination. But of that uninsured 10%, the majority is comprised of those who willfully choose to not buy health insurance.

Such as young morons who think they'll live forever, and that their money would be better spent on extreme sports and Red Bulls.

Making health insurance compulsory like car insurance might seem to be an entirely easier and more sensible option if, as the president purports, making certain that people were insured is his only concern. But even this idea has produced less than thrilling results.

Of course insurance isn’t his only or even primary concern. Money is the issue. Money is spent on care. Health insurance is being used by Democrats as the front-man for control of the health care system, which in turn leads to money. Your money. Do the math, people. The discussion of “insuring national health” is largely a meaningless and misleading one. The issue is centrally a question of: “Who is going to pay for care?”

Now I would never dare impugn the motives of a compassionate liberal Democrat in congress. Might I simply suggest that it seems entirely expedient that a party and ideology which hold “government control over anything we can get our hands on” as a core value would propose more government intervention as a solution to a problem largely created by government intervention. I’m just saying.

Are insurance companies innocent bystanders in the car-wreck that is health care? Certainly not. Is there corruption and ethically questionable decision-making in the private sector of health care? Absolutely. But the driver behind the wheel of that crashed car is Big Brother, who should have been at home doing his constitutionally appointed job of enforcing laws to curtail corruption in the private sector.

In placed where the government has offered a public insurance option, employers have instantly dropped their employees’ coverage and the government de facto becomes the overseer of the people's health care. This is unavoidable and, “surprisingly”, happens more rapidly than the governments involved were ready for. Obama’s promise that “most” Americans will be able to keep their current health insurance plan is preposterous. No sane business will pay for something that Nancy Pelosi offers to cover for “free”.

This means that the bureaucratic quagmire in Washington, the one conservatives are trying to warn against in the matter of health care and liberals are insisting has no desire to run health care, will indeed run health care. Whether Democrats know their plan will lead to socialized medicine, the type Canadians drive to the United States to compensate for, or they are oblivious to the mountain of evidence (and common sense) pointing to the inevitability of socialized medicine should their own plan be implemented, the result is the same. This reality of socialized medicine via Obama’s “public option” plan must be understood and debated in the public square.

There is so much more to discuss regarding the health care issue. I will be writing a series of columns on the topic in coming weeks. Please understand that this piece today is in no way to be understood as a comprehensive, end-all summation of the matter. All that matters, for now, is that you, the American taxpayer, clearly understand that the president’s current “public option” plan will without a doubt bring about the same type of government-run health care seen in Canada, Great Britain, and the like.

The federal annexation of health care forever and fundamentally changes the relationship between a citizen and their government. Barring another revolution to depose elitist control in foreign power-centers, crossing the collectivist socialized medicine line that Western Europe nations already have is as close to a “point of no return” decision that a nation can make.

We’re all going to die. The question on the table for members of this freest society in human history is how will we choose to live?

Prince Charles Fever

The next-in-line for the British monarch, Prince Charles, has officially put the world on notice: we haven't much time. Global warming will end things as we know it, according to the Prince of Wales, in 96 months. Pretty precise number if you ask me.

Writing in his column this week, former subject of the British crown Mark Steyn offers some perspective on the dire warnings coming from His Highness.

An excerpt:

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you getting ill in the first place – by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning.

Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment”, then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “Soft Despotism”.

The good news is that, at this week’s G8 summit, America’s allies would commit only to the fuzziest and most meaningless of environmental goals. Europe has been hit far harder by the economic downturn. When your unemployment rate is 17 per cent (as in Spain), “unsustainable growth” is no longer your most pressing problem.

The environmental cult is itself a product of what the Prince calls the “Age of Convenience”: it’s what you worry about it when you don’t have to worry about jobs or falling house prices or collapsed retirement accounts. Today, as European prime ministers are beginning to figure out, a strategic goal of making things worse when they’re already worse is a much tougher sell.

More Words of Wisdom From Dennis

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist, renowned author, and all-around wise man. His Prager University clips on YouTube are brief videos on various topics that pertain to life and politics. PLEASE watch the latest effort from Mr. Prager on the issue of "Happiness":

Misplaced Moral Priorities

by: R.J. Moeller

I doubt that I will find myself alone in acknowledging a deep regret for the inappropriate way in which I treated my parents (pictured below, from 1988) and other influential adults during my teen years. I was never an explicitly devious kid, but to my shame I treated the good people in my life, the people who cared about me more than anything in this world, with frequent disrespect and animosity.

Conversely, I had little problem showing my admiration for the most delinquent of characters from my neighborhood, school and church. I treated troublemaking older kids who convinced me to do things like throw rocks through the windows of a local warehouse with more kindness and deference than I did my own mother who was at that same moment likely at home trying to get meatball stains out of my Ninja Turtles sweatpants.

In retrospect, I am convinced that as a direct result of my improperly organized affections, I spent many years of my life an angry, confused kid. I can see so much more clearly now the wisdom contained in the old axiom: “Those who are good to the bad will be bad to the good.” Or as I’ve also heard it: “Those who are tough to the good will be good to the tough.”

The internal moral compass each of us lives and dies by is similar to a real, directional compass in that it can be thrown off its proper bearings. A defective compass out in the woods is worse than useless, and once it has been compromised, you must either identify the root cause for its defection or obtain an entirely new one. Likewise, possessing a defective moral compass when attempting to navigate through life’s dense terrain is equally worthless. The way we live, the way we treat people, the way we think about things are not wholly separate things that take place inside of individual vacuums. Our thoughts, attitudes and actions have ripple effects.

Perhaps it’s because I’m more conscious of the need for moral clarity and consistency in my own personal life now, but when I hear American leaders and government officials rationalize away the evil deeds of evil people in the world, or as is more frequently the case, remain silent in the face of evil, I feel a twinge of self-recognition in light of their morally inverted shortsightedness.

There is in fact no contradiction between personally showing kindness to someone who doesn’t deserve it, to “turning the other cheek” when personally slighted or offended, and the identification and denouncement of immoral, illegal or depraved actions (or people). There is also, of course, a legitimate need for our foreign policy leaders to conduct themselves with an appropriate level of diplomatic decorum when interacting with national figureheads around the globe.

But just as in the case of an individual who make a regular habit of reserving their vitriol for the decent people in their lives, and civility for the indecent people, a nation too can lose its moral bearings by constantly misusing their emotional capital.

When time after time, year after year, a citizenry hears from some of its most prominent and influential voices that we ought to treat murderous foreign enemies abroad better than we do our political rivals at home, new generations of citizens can’t help but grow up morally stunted and confused.

A nation that raises children to excuse the hate-filled threats of murderous dictators around the globe more readily than the taunts from an opposing baseball team’s fans is in crisis.

Truly, our problem as a nation and people isn’t that we don’t care enough, that we aren’t capable of showing enough compassion. It’s that we care about the wrong things and in the wrong ways. We show compassion to the wrong people and show it in the wrong ways.

The most recent example of what I’m alluding to is the difference in the public statements from the current administration regarding, on the one hand, the courageous protesters in Iran last month, and on the other, conservatives such as George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin.

For 30 years, fanatical Islamic terrorists have run a repressive theocratic state in Iran. Until 9/11 and Al Qaeda, no single entity had killed as many American citizens in recent history as the regime in Tehran. For the past 5 years that same regime has fueled insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of US soldiers. Iran has been accruing the technology, and producing the material, to build nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders, regardless the party that happens to be running Congress or the White House, have consistently and openly preached “Death to America”, “Death to Great Britain”, and “Death to Israel” on national television. It is the stated goal of the mullahs in Iran to “wipe Israel off the map” in the near future, and to then come for the “Great Satan.” (Great Satan = us.)

In such an inhospitable, dangerous environment, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, tens of thousands of Iranian citizens marched in open defiance of their dictatorial government to protest the corrupt results of their nation’s presidential election. The seedlings of an organic revolution, one that if followed far enough could have potentially ensured our ability to avoid military conflict with Iran, weren’t offered a single drop of the much-needed rhetorical water President Obama has been sprinkling on Americans looking for “change” since 2007.

The man who, with nothing more than his talent for reading scripted speeches well, possesses a supposed ability to change the lives of people and fates of entire nations remained silent when even the French were compelled to speak out in support of the Iranian dissidents.

The same Sharia government that currently subjugates women as second-class citizens, executes homosexuals, murders political dissenters, and has no interest in “going green” with cap-and-trade legislation could not rouse the ire of modern liberals. The Left’s visible and vocal moral indignation, it seems, is reserved solely for the values and elected representatives of those dangerous soccer moms driving around Red State America with a Jesus-fish and “Bush-Cheney ‘04” bumper sticker on their minivan.

The likes of Barack Obama, Paul Krugman, and Keith Olbermann apparently end up running their “righteous anger” wells so bone-dry castigating conservatives with funny accents during election seasons that the Left has little, if anything, of substance to offer when we need them to make even the most rudimentary condemnations of a legitimate enemy. Or in the case of the Iranian protestors, similar to the freedom-loving dissidents in the gulags of the former USSR during the Cold War, when we need them to lend vocal and moral support to people yearning (and dying) for liberty’s sake.

Many in the media and congress were so sure President Bush and Dick Cheney were the epitome of evil that they felt entirely comfortable and justified in using some of the most degrading, disrespectful, and undermining rhetoric any administration has ever faced. Such outspoken critics clearly knew the power contained in their own words. They knew the world was watching and listening to what the United States and her leaders did and said about the Bush administration.

The American media, with an explicit intent to help sway voters’ opinions, never stopped telling us how unpopular President Bush was in Paris, London, Buenos Aires and everywhere in between. The message was clear: conservatives aren’t simply wrong; they are evil and dangerous and we should listen to the folks in Belgium and Crete who are confirming it.

Such misplaced, misapplied anger and hostility unhinges one’s moral compass. It has to.

As a result, we find ourselves in a time and place where the American president has convinced himself, and sadly millions of Americans, that the only real problem between the irreconcilable wing of Islam (embodied by the murderous rulers in Iran) and the United States (the freest, most prosperous, most honorable nation in human history) is that we haven’t been nice enough yet. As if the main thing we’ve bee missing in our attempts to peaceably resolve the differences between our two countries is a public display of moral ambivalence towards the latest heinous acts the Iranian government perpetually commits against its own people.

Real compassion is compassion that comes to the defense of the defenseless. Real change, in a place like Iran, would be a regime change. The genocide in Darfur that celebrities like George Clooney have raised awareness about would end tomorrow if we razed the strongholds of the Muslim murderers who are slaughtering their own fellow countrymen, women and children. Iran and North Korea act with hostile, reckless abandon not because we’ve been mean, but because they are.

Of course the world is a complicated place, and no political party or ideology has a monopoly on the mishandling of important foreign policy matters. But if our leaders, from either side of the political aisle, continue to misdirect our strongest collective moral outrage (and subsequent actions) at shaming, humiliating, and demonizing political foes here at home, we will have no real hope of mustering the quality and quantity of moral fortitude required to defeat enemies abroad.

When personalities and polls, instead of principles, are the driving force behind our politics everyone loses.

Barack Obama isn’t evil for failing to speak out against the mullahs in Iran with the same gusto he did against George W. Bush, John McCain and Sarah Palin. He’s just wrong.